Schedule R-1, Residental Service
Does the hour matter on Schedule R-1, Residental Service? No — one rate, every hour of the year.
- off-peak10.28¢
There is no peak and no off-peak here: the price per kilowatt-hour at 3am is the same as at 6pm, on a Sunday as on a Tuesday, in July as in January, though the price does step up once a month’s use passes the tier threshold shown below. Moving laundry or car charging to another time of day will not change this bill by a cent. What does change it is how much you use, and the fixed charge below, which you pay whether you use anything or not.
What does Schedule R-1, Residental Service cost a year?
| Household | Uses | A month | Per year | Works out to |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apartment One or two people, no central air, no electric heat | 4,866 kWh | $63 | $756 | 15.5¢ / kWh |
| Family home Three or four people with central air conditioning | 9,453 kWh | $102 | $1,227 | 13.0¢ / kWh |
| Home with an EV Same house, plus an electric car charging overnight | 13,103 kWh | $134 | $1,602 | 12.2¢ / kWh |
Estimates, not quotes. We run three made-up but realistic households through this tariff hour by hour for a full year — including the way air conditioning loads the afternoon and an EV loads the small hours. Your own bill depends on when you actually use electricity, which is exactly the thing a per-kWh number hides.
What you actually pay
| Period | Rate | Applies when |
|---|---|---|
| off-peak | 10.28¢ up to 300 kWh10.28¢ | midnight–midnight |
Plus a fixed charge of $21.3 per month.
Should you be on Schedule R-1, Residental Service?
One rate, every hour of the year. That makes this plan predictable and nothing else: there is no cheap window to move laundry or car charging into, and no penalty for running the oven at six in the evening. Predictability is worth something if your schedule is not yours to control — but if it is, a flat rate is the one structure that guarantees you cannot benefit from it.
Before a single kilowatt-hour moves, this plan charges $256 a year in fixed fees. On the apartment above that is 34% of the whole bill; on the house with a car charging in it, 16%. Fixed charges are invisible in a cents-per-kWh comparison and they punish small users hardest — if you use very little electricity, the headline rate is the least important number on this page.
Expect the bill to move with the calendar. The same family home costs about $134 in July and $83 in February — a $52 spread driven by heating and cooling far more than by anything you chose. Budget against the July figure, not the average, and a summer bill stops being a surprise.
How it compares to Northern Virginia Elec’s other plans
Measured against the other residential plans this utility files, a family home lands 1st cheapest of 2 — nothing else here beats it for that household.
Other Northern Virginia Elec plans
Who can be on Northern Virginia Elec’s Schedule R-1, Residental Service?
Eligibility is not our judgement — it is written into the tariff Northern Virginia Elec filed. This is what that document says:
Applicable to residential consumers, residential-farm consumers, and churches located on or near the Cooperative's distribution lines, for service including lighting, incidental appliances, refrigeration, cooking, water-heating and power for individual motors up to and including ten horsepower (10 H.P.)
Quoted from the filed tariff. Your utility decides eligibility, not us; check with them before you switch.
If this is new to you
- How to read your electric bill
Four kinds of charge, only two of which you can do anything about.
- Tiered billing for electricity: why the last kWh costs more
A cheap allowance, then a cliff. Where the cliff sits is the whole game.
- Should you switch to a time-of-use electricity plan?
A wide peak-to-off-peak gap is a lever, not a saving. Levers need something to move.
- Why is my electric bill so high? Seven causes, in the order to check them
Seven causes, ranked by how often they are the answer. Only two are about using more.
Where this comes from
- Effective
- 2025-01-01
the date this tariff took effect
- Covers
- delivery + supply
the ZIP-code service map lists this territory as bundled, so the utility sells delivery and supply together
- Enrollment
- open to new customers
Tariff document: https://www.novec.com/About_NOVEC/upload/NOVEC_RateRebal-010124.pdf